[Help] Setting up Traid

[Rainman]

I've just ordered a new F4-425 plus, and have been planning the migration from my 12 year old Netgear 4 bay.
I have bought an 8tb hdd and external case to backup the old NAS. Critical data will also be clouded. I then plan to move the old drives 1TB and 3 x 3TB into the 425 plus.
My understanding is that I will insert the drives 1TB first followed by the 3 x 3TB drives.
Once everything is up and running, I will copy over the data from the 8TB external. Again once all is good I will remove the 1TB drive and hot swap in the 8TB. I understand with an 8333 configuration will leave 5tb unused, but I don't mind, and will get it back if I replace a 3TB drive for an 8TB.
I assume this is logical?
Here is the next question.
If one of the 3TB drives fail can I replace it with any size as long as it is 3TB or greater. Ideally I would get an 8TB, but if it is a rapid decline and I have only a few days to find a replacement to ensure redundancy is maintained, can I just throw in a 3, 4, or 6TB drive.

Thanks.

[TMzethar]

Your understanding is basically correct.
Please note that the 8TB drive must be in a file system format supported by TOS in order to manually mount it after hot insertion.
Supported formats include FAT, FAT32, NTFS, EXT2, EXT3, EXT4, ExFAT, Btrfs, and HFS+.

Starting from when you swap in the second 8TB drive, due to the redundancy provided to the left 5TB, TRAID will be able to utilize the remaining 5TB of space.

If unfortunately a member of the HDD in TRAID is damaged, you can replace and repair it with a hard disk of the same or larger capacity.

[Gremlin]

A word of caution:
If your intention is to initialise the TNAS with a single 1TB drive in the first instance, the TOS o/s will be installed on that drive (with default storage pool and volume - whether that be Traid or not).

If subsequently you wish to replace that 1TB drive with another (eg 8TB), you will need to first migrate the o/s to one of the other drives for continued operation. (Later you can migrate the o/s again if you wish.)

Have you considered using an nvme drive (or 2) to initialise the system and keep as the o/s drive? (As is becoming common practice.) In this case the default Pool/Volume can be retained without migrating the o/s.

Have you considered installing new 8TB drive in new TNAS (either with or without nvme as above) and directly transferring files from Netgear?

[Rainman]

Thanks for the quick reply folks.
I have now revised my plan.

File format noted, I will use ExFAT.

I will not reuse the 1TB, as I only needed it for migration to achieve 7TB useable in a 1333 drive configuration, so I have enough space for migration as I have about 6.3 TB to transfer.

I have now bought an additional 8TB drive so initial setup will be 3338, and once the transfer is complete I will swap out one of the 3TB drives for the 8Tb I was using as backup for the transfer.

I have also bought a 500GB NVME, and was planning to use it for read cache, though I'm unsure if a really need it, so using it for the o/s it a great idea. Can I still use the NVME for Plex and additional storage for critical files as part of a 3-2-1 backup, or should I reseve it purely for the o/s?

Is hot swapping of drives recommended, as many years ago I hot swapped a failing drive on my Netgear, and the whole NAS crashed. It took 3 days of Netgear support to repair the problem. Since then I have only ever cold swapped, and had no issues.

[Nikdfish]

FWIW, I went from a TRAID consisting of 2 8TB drives to using 2 12TB drives using hot swaps (one drive at a time) with no issues. It was a F2-423 running TOS6. Prep time for a new drive to integrate before being used for expansion was about 24 hours following insertion. Adding an 8TB to a TRAID consisting of 3 8TB drives to max out a D4-320 took about 40 hours of configuration time following install (also a hot install). Expansion following new drive configuration finishing happens pretty quickly. I am using ext4 in both TRAID's.

[Herewerare2024]

The NVME cache idea is great if many sources use the same data. Like if you were setup to push out system updates to many computers. ...or perhaps if you host lots of office documents shared between many people. If you are plex or any surveillance the nvme cache will do NOTHING. Also for plex... just configure a space in ram for transcodes and your golden.

Again, NVME cache=useless for most uses of this grade of equipment.